Harley Davidson Analysis
We think it would be interesting to quote first Harley-Davidson's mission, in order to get a first approach of what is the purpose of the company from their point of view. The mission talks first about dreams, rather than motorcycles, which is what the public has in mind. This mission says:
"We fulfill dreams through the experience of motorcycling, by providing to motorcyclists and to the general public an expanding line of motorcycles and branded products and services in selected market segments."
We are going to see how their promotional strategy keeps the track of their mission statement, and how they try always to fulfill those dreams.
Harley-Davidson uses advertising and personnel selling for their promotional mix. The advertising that Harley-Davidson utilizes nationally are four to five television commercials a year. These commercials are institutional because they are advertising the company and not a specific product. They also have institutional advertisements in national magazines such as Road & Track, Popular Science, and Fortune as well as specific motorcycle magazines as Easy Rider. Locally, individual Harley-Davidson dealers advertise on the radio and through direct mail. Harley-Davidson uses personnel through their 595 dealerships located throughout the United States. A customer has to go to a dealership in order to purchase a motorcycle. While they are there they are attended to by sales people that answer any questions they have and help them pick out the motorcycle they want.
Harley-Davidson institutes a pull strategy in the promotion of the FXDS-CONV Dyna Convertible. Due to the limited number of dealerships (for example, there are only five in Nashville and the surrounding communities) customers must actively seek out a location to purchase this bike. Also, because so many customers decide to customize their Dyna Convertibles, they must place a special order with the dealer, who in turn must contact intermediaries along the distribution channel in order to satisfy the customer. Further, the fact that demand for Harley motorcycles far exceeds the supply indicates that a pull strategy is in place.
The mass media advertising implemented by Harley-Davidson is intended to reach as many members of the general public as possible. Generally, this type of advertisement is used because of its depth in effectively reaching people. These ads are intended to target both potential repeat customers as well as first time buyers. Locally, C&S Harley-Davidson uses direct mailings to specifically target previous owners of their motorcycles as well as owners of competing brands.
There are many ways to analyze the performance of a company, some more popular than others. According to the Barney text the accounting method is the most popular way of measuring a firm's performance (Barney, 2002). Some of the reasons for the popularity could include the fact that accounting measures of performance are publicly available on many firms and they communicate a great deal of information about a firm's operations. Other methods of performance analysis include firm survival and the multiple stakeholder approach.
Motorcycle is also called motorbike is a two or thee wheeled vehicle powered by a petrol, diesel, engine mounted midway between the front and rear wheels. The motorcycle, which is having much heavier and stronger, frame than that of a bicycle. The motorcycle is developed from the bicycle. The people for their convenient and smooth travel for the recreation and sports purpose use the motorcycles. The motorbikes are used throughout the world, the police and the fire department use motorcycles to carry medical personnel to accident scenes. Before the 20yrs ago a motocycle was carried for the noise, dirt and frequent breakdown which the use of its entailed. It was then truly a sportsman’s machine and of little use in the commercial field.
Harley-Davidson Inc. was founded in 1903 and produced most of its motorcycles to be sold to the US military during World War 1. In 1953, Harley-Davidson became the only US motorcycle manufacturer for the next 46 years (Harley Davidson Museum). In 1988, Mr. Richard Teerlink was appointed the Chief Operating Officer of Harley-Davidson Inc. until 1997 (Bloomberg). Mr. Teerlink started with Harley around 1981 as VP and CFO of Harley, which was when the company was trying to reshape its corporate culture. This was a time when the company was facing serious competition from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers like Honda, who were continuing to take up US market share since the 1960s. Harley-Davidson Inc. had to transform itself and break away from the typical corporate culture in order
This case study is about “Specialized Bicycle Components Inc.” known as Ride the Red “S”. Specialized was founded in 1974 by Mike Sinyard. According to Chris Murphy, director of marketing for Red “S”, specialized is for serious riders. He says, “The customer is buying the ride from us, not just the bike.” The company began to produce its own bike parts by 1976, and introduced the first major production mountain bike in the world in 1980. Specialized now has an extensive global distribution network of 5000 retailers in 35 countries in Asia, North America, South America, and Australia. They maintained a reputation as the technological leader in the bike and bike accessories. The formal mission is still the same since they established the company “To give everyone the best ride of their life.”
These same sorts of systems could easily be added to, or modified as needed, to track the new motorcycle lines HD will produce to attract both women and young adults. These systems have been an invaluable means for HD to reevaluate itself in the past and thus are ‘tried and true’ making it a moot point to replace them. HD, however, needs to concentrate some effort on implementing a system to determine the most appropriate locations for future dealerships. This new evaluation system will aid HD in determining effective locations for new dealerships and assist in providing further market share penetration for the company in essentially ‘untapped’ consumer areas.
"Harley-Davidson: At Last" as presented in Hartley's Marketing Mistakes and Successes presents the circumstances around HD's near collapse and since rinse to near mythic success. This case is a great example of marketing myopia; HD saw them-selves as full-size motorcycles' manufactures, not in the transportation, or even the entertainment industry. They believed no one bought motorcycles for transportation, but rather for leisure time use.
A Harley-Davidson motorcycle is more than just a mode of transportation or ordinary product. It's
II. The Challenge HD has chosen the strategic direction of targeting women and the younger market that is technologically conscious in order to increase its share in the first time motorcycle owner market space. With the introduction of the new VRSC’S, and the new lowered sportster 833 L and the 1200 L, designed for small riders who want more power, also promoting the already existing HD motorcycle owners to step forward and purchase a bigger model. HD is in a position to attain a sizeable share in the first time motorcycle owners, the young males, and females’ marketplace. To target the women and the young market with the new product line, the company has adopted the following marketing objectives: to expand its current market (market expansion), diversify its product line (product diversification), and modify its marketing mix to target women and the younger demographic.
This Company made their mission statement in 2012 and according to me this mission and vision statement is good but these need loads of changes as I have read in this course mission statement should be:-
Despite their conception in 1903, Harley-Davidson and the motorcycle industry as a whole didn’t really take off until after the Second World War. Many people rode motorcycles during the war, with Harley-Davidson themselves supplying almost 90,000 motorcycles for the U.S. military during this time. Many veterans chose to purchase motorcycles upon returning home, as they enjoyed riding during the war and wanted to continue riding in their civilian life. This generation known as the "baby-boomers" quickly became the main target audience for many of Harley-Davidson’s marketing efforts. With sales increasing and the industry growing, many "motorcycle clubs" and "rallies" were introduced. Unfortunately, due to the lewd behavior displayed by most people associated with these clubs and rallies, bikers typically had an image of being disorderly and raucous. Harley-Davidson’s image itself took a big shot due to the Hells Angels. This was a motorcycle gang wishing to become notorious for "drug trafficking and other organized crime activities," who used only Harley-Davidson motorcycles. All of this combined to lead to a decline in demand and sales throughout the entire industry during the 1960’s. The industry was really helped out with the release of the Hollywood film Easy Rider in 1969. This film helped change the public’s perception of bikers and sparked an increase in motorcycle demand which has lasted to this day.
Michael Porter tells us how the life cycle works through stages, first of which is the development phase, into the introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Hunsk motors didn’t carefully take into account each phase of its product sold, and lacked the ability to connect consumers towards the motorcycles identity. By introducing...
James, W. B., & Graham, B. (2004). Strategic change in the face of success? Harley-Davidson, Inc. Strategic Change, 13(4), 205.
In today's world of consumerism, there is great competition among businesses to sell their product. It goes without saying that in this complex society exists modern technology that has lead to the development of various media platforms. In turn, these various platforms are used by corporations to advertise their product. On that topic, there are various tools of advertising that corporations implement with their choice of media platform to sell their product more effectively. This paper will analyze the advertising tactics that are present in two poster advertisements, both of Lexus vehicles.
Italian manufacturer Piaggio ranks as one of the world’s top four players in its core business. It has consolidated leadership in the European 2-wheeler market. Piaggio should not miscalculate its competitors. Competition in the industry is very powerful, not only nationally but internationally as well. This is due to two well-established companies in this sector which are the Japanese Yamaha and Honda. Yamaha and Honda strengths are their long-run experience in the sector and the high quality image of products. Due to participations to the motorcycle championships, these two companies constantly receive positive feedbacks to their efforts in researching for first class products. In the future, other kinds of competitors are expected to arise: Chinese companies whose ability to imitate and create similar products at highly competitive prices is getting more and more dangerous (Piaggio, 2008)
...bold vision and mission statement Kodak has made the statement that they intend to compete in today’s technologically advanced market.